Hydrides and Anhydrides C. Warren Hunt1119 Sydenham Road SW
CALGARY, ALBERTA, CANADA T2T 0T5
Tel. (403)-244-3341, Fax (403) 244-2834
E-mail: archeanc@telusplanet.net
Hydrogen being 90% or more of all matter in the Universe, must
have been abundantly present in the formation of the early earth. The
consensus among scientists has been that most primordial hydrogen was
expelled as the earth accreted. New evidence challenges the consensus
raises questions as to the validity of other long-held geological
concepts.
The new evidence involves the behavior of hydrogen nucleii, which
at pressures characteristic of mantle depths have shed their electrons
and inject themselves inside the first electron rings of metal atoms.
Thus sequestered within the earth, hydrogen may comprise as much as
30-40 percent of total earth mass today.
Hydrogen penetration into metals was demonstrated by Vladimir N.
Larin, a geologist, whose project over the last 34 years has been
research in the USSR and FSU on sources of natural hydrogen. Three major
effects result from the phenomenon: (1) transmutation, (2)
densification, and (3) fluidization.
The following diagram from Larin’s laboratory illustrates the
mass that is added to transmuted potassium by hydrogen gas at pressure.
The lower curve shows a 2.75% increase in density for the metal alone,
rising from ~0.87 to ~2.4 g/cm3 and
pressure up to ~30 Gpa. The upper curve shows a 4.25% increase in
density of the metal in a hydrogen atmosphere, from ~0.87 to ~3.7 g/cm3 with the same pressure increase. Note the four distinct stages. The stages ascending are:

COVALENT ADSORPTION of H by K metal with DENSIFICATION from ~0,87 to ~1.65 g/cm3, nearly doubling the density without any pressure increase. The metal “sucks up” hydrogen.

INTRA-LATTICE ADSORPTION of H by K metal with DENSIFICATION from ~1.65 to ~2.0 g/cm3 with pressure rising from zero to 5 Gpa; hydrogen retains its electron.

INTRA-LATTICE OCCLUSION of H by K metal with DENSIFICATION from ~2.0 to ~2.35 g/cm3 without further pressure increase; hydrogen sheds its electron.

IONIC HYDRIDE where H nucleus penetrates the potassium atomic
electron shell, thus effecting metal DENSIFICATION from ~2.35 to ~3.7
g/cm3 with a pressure increase from 5
Gpa to ~30 Gpa. Addition of mass to an atomic core is by definition
transmutation. Thus, this stage transmutes potassium to intermetal.

Of the total densification to 4.25 times original density, 40% is in
the two spontaneous densification stages, 1 and 3. Stage 4 comprises a
further 48% of the densification, the nucleus-injection stage and
transmutation stage. Its upper limit is unknown.
From this data it is easily shown that the excess core and mantle
density above that of the crust can be attributed to injected hydrogen,
and the density differences between inner core, outer core, and lower
mantle can be treated as phase effects. In this scenario the idea of an
iron core is superfluous.
V.N. Larin demonstrated the fluidity of titanium hydride for this
writer by setting a ruby in plasticized titanium intermetal. Under
reduced pressure the hydrogen bled off, allowing the metal to
recrystallize and leave the ruby set firmly in metallic titanium.
The potassium and titanium behaviors are not unique. All elements
but noble gases form hydrides, some readily, others not so readily.
Thus, a mixture of non-metal hydrides and fluidic intermetals that
comprised the interior of the primordial earth should undergo
fractionation and coalescense of components on the basis of mobility and
density differences.
Non-metal hydrides, H2O, NH3, H2S, CH4,
that were present during accretion of the earth would have been the
first to go. Expelled, they accumulated as atmosphere and hydrosphere.
Solar wind bombardment and dissociation of non-metal hydrides allowed
hydrogen to escape into space. This left residual oxygen and nitrogen
to build up in the atmosphere, which then enabled a transformation in
the biosphere. Replacement of the early Archean biota of
hydrogen-tolerant prokaryotes by oxygen-tolerant eukaryotes in the late
Archean is clear evidence of the conversion of the atmosphere at that
time.
Intermetal hydride plumes would follow. Coalescing on the bases
of differential fluidity and density, viscous intermetal plumes rise
buoyantly through the mantle, perhaps lubricated by hydrides of the
earth’s third most abundant element, the transition element, silicon.
Rising into regimes of reduced pressure the intermetals dissociate or
oxidize, creating crust in the forms of rock-forming minerals and metal
ores.
The hydrides of silicon, the silanes (SiH4, Si2H6, Si3H8, Si4H10,
etc.) are of special interest. Gases at standard conditions, they react
vigorously with water, producing quartz, volcanic ash, and rock-forming
minerals, depending on depth, pressure and the admixture of other metal
hydrides. The high mobility of silane explains the mode of transfer of
silicon from the interior to the oxidic crust. Crust then is the residue
after silane and intermetal oxidation and release of hydrogen, which
eventually escapes into space.
Carbon, the sister element of silicon, is a lesser component of
earth makeup, but probably is prominent in the form of carbides in the
interior. Its primary hydride form, methane (CH4),
although energy-laden like silane, behaves quite differently in three
important contrasting ways. First, it does not react with water; second,
its combustion products are only gases; and third, it enables the
biosphere.
Where silane is stalled in the crust by reacting with water,
methane and hydrogen released by its partial oxidation proceed upward in
fracture pathways. Methane and hydrogen seep into deep, shield mines
and through porous members of sedimentary series. Both are major
constituents of fluid inclusions in sub-oceanic basalts as well as in
shield granites. Their migration is differentially impeded due to their
different molecular sizes. Methane may be trapped temporarily, while
hydrogen escapes. Both enter the atmosphere worldwide on a large scale.
Thus the hydridic earth image comprises a mobile inner geosphere
of highly-reduced, dense, intermetals and carbides, an outer geosphere
of oxidic rock that has accumulated incrementally through geological
time, and a transient liquid-gas envelope. The image implies a core that
is neither iron nor very hot, because the heat source for endogeny is
primarily not primordial heat but the chemical energy released in the
upper mantle and lower crust, near the crust-mantle boundary by hydride
oxidation.
Hydrocarbons other than methane are partially oxidized carbon
forms, and thus unlikely to occur in any form but methane in the earth’s
interior where extreme reducing conditions prevail. When methane rises
to outer crust levels from the interior, its chemical energy is
available to metabolize bacteria and archaea that live there in total
darkness at elevated temperatures. They get that energy by stripping
hydrogen from the methane and oxidizing it metabolically.
When bacteria and archaea strip hydrogen from methane, they create “anhydrides” of methane, CH3, CH2, etc. Two CH3s combine to make C2H6, ethane; two CH3s and one CH2 make C3H8,
propane, etc. The process is known on the surface, where outcrops of
petroliferous strata sometimes are sealed by bacterially produced tar
seals behind which live oil has accumulated. In this case, bacteria have
stripped hydrogen from live oil, rendering it immobile. Anhydride
theory merely extrapolates the process backward to explain stripping of
methane, the lowest carbon numbered hydrocarbon. Petroleum can be
interpreted as degenerated methane, a product of the biosphere.
Petroleum produced by bacterial stripping of methane is, a mixture of
anhydrides of methane, an organic product produced from inorganic
methane.
Coal and oil shales are also anhydride products. In peat and
kerogen-rich shales, partially oxidized carbon is present that has lost
electrons and thus carries positive charges. By contrast, the carbon in
methane that effuses from the highly reduced earth interior has acquired
electrons and is negatively charged. Opposite charges cause capture of
effusing methane by peat and kerogen. Once captured, methane is
stripped progressively of its hydrogen by bacteria and archaea that
naturally occur in the peat and kerogen.
The terminal anhydride, pure carbon, the main component of the
purest coals and asphaltites, and protein molecules (porphyrins and
others) that are found in petroleum and coal are molecular residues of
organic origin. The fact that coal and oil shales have more carbon and
hydrogen than their peat and fossil predecessors is clear evidence that
fossils cannot fully explain their origins. These high carbon and
hydrogen contents of oil shales and coals require abiogenic additions,
whereas organic molecules require organic provenance. Methane and
petroleum found in coal seams and organic shales should be seen as
evidence of methane capture, not methane generation.
The topology of petroleum occurrence is a further defeat for the
argument in favour of either an exclusively organic or exclusively
abiogenic origin for petroleum. If oil were either rising from
primordial sources in the earth’s interior or created in “oil windows”
by catagenesis, the more mobile fractions would escape from the depths
and be found more abundantly near the surface and less mobile fractions,
low gravity oils, would be present at depth. Exactly the opposite is
the norm. Methane gas, the most mobile hydrocarbon, is more abundant
with depth, worldwide; and tars, the least mobile, are most abundant at
and near the surface.
Working backwards through the above points, we can say that:

Topologies of hydrocarbon occurrences indicate that methane effuses from the interior, not petroleum; that

Topologies of hydrocarbon occurrences indicate that low-gravity oil is not generated at depth in oil windows; that

Bacteria and archaea in the outer crust strip hydrogen from methane
progressively through condensates, high gravity oil, and low gravity
oil, to bitumens; that

Hydrides of silicon and carbon along with intermetals rise into
crustal levels where dissociation and oxidation liberate the heat of
endogeny and deposit rock-forming minerals, and metal deposits, leaving
only methane and hydrogen to effuse into the atmosphere; that

Nonmetal hydrides escaping from the interior of the primordial earth
created a reducing atmosphere that was changed over to oxygen-rich by
the loss of hydrogen to space; and that

The discovery that hydrogen nuclei under pressure penetrate atomic
shells of metals, transmuting the metals to intermetals, densifying
them, and fluidizing them, creates an entirely new geological picture of
the earth’s interior, of endogeny, and of the mode by which the crust
was created.